4 Pillars to Grow Your Business
The old adage “evolve or die” is especially true for a small to midsized business. Many entrepreneurs want to see their business grow but are afraid to take a risk. However, changes (even the risky ones) are necessary to promote further success.
If you want your business to grow and succeed, you must be willing to step out of your comfort zone and accept the fact that your business decisions won’t always be comfortable. The book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, by Gino Wickman, outlines these four fundamental beliefs you must accept to truly be ready for change.
1. You must build and maintain a true leadership team.
It is difficult for business owners to find the time to create business plans and new ideas when their days are taken up by menial, but necessary, tasks. The solution: delegate.
You need a trusted leadership team that is capable of running autonomously to improve your business model. That starts with choosing the right people — those who are driven, motivated, and understand the company and its best interests. And it requires one very difficult action: letting go.
When you let those carefully chosen leaders do the jobs you hired them to do, you will begin see more growth.
2. Hitting the ceiling is inevitable.
Reaching natural limits as your business expands is to be expected, but you must be willing to make changes if you want to break through that cap on your abilities.
Businesses have built-in limits at the organizational, departmental, and individual levels. For example, as the CEO, you can’t be expected to work 80 hours a week and handle every aspect of management forever. You have individual limits!
Likewise, your organization has limits. You may be built to handle a particular volume of business — in order to grow, you need to make a significant investment in expanding and re-designing that internal organization. Otherwise, you won’t be able to handle the increase in volume and instead of growing, your business will implode.
Although there will be different courses of action to take depending on the level of the barrier, remember that action is the only way to break through a ceiling.
3. You can only run your business on one operating system.
You need a uniform vision, voice, culture, and method of operating your business. If all of your leaders and employees are not on the same page, how can you expect to attain and track success?
There will always be more than one way to accomplish any goal. Different people may have different ideas about which way is best. But to make forward progress, you, your leadership team, and your employees must all understand, embrace, and act on one set of directions.
As a new business owner you should devote your time to creating a single system of operation that employees at all levels understand and acknowledge. If your business is not under one operating system, take the time to transition all employees into one process.
4. You must be open-minded, growth-oriented, and vulnerable.
You can’t know everything, be an expert in everything, or always be right.
Being open-minded means admitting when you don’t know something. It means asking for help when you need it. It means turning to others who are the experts and having the sense to listen to and follow their advice — even when that advice is different from what you expected.
A leadership team with a culture of honesty will take you farther than one that simply carries out your orders. Remember, those in different positions in your company will have unique skillsets and perspectives. By encouraging them to share thoughts and feedback, you can uncover areas of weakness and improvements you won’t have thought of alone.
Your business should be primed for growth at all times. That way you’ll be ready when your business makes a leap towards an even brighter future.
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